Social Cohesion Series #1: The potential of preschools and co-created children's picture books to improve social cohesion

This year, PRESTO will be highlighting work on interventions and programmes that improve social cohesion between diverse groups. Highlights will be drawn from PRESTO-led primary research, other work by our partners, and learnings from fora and conferences where we are presenting this year. The kick-off post in this series comes from Qimti Paienjton, an expert on social protection and early childhood. In this post, she describes a bibliotherapy and participatory co-creation intervention implemented with host and refugee children and families in Türkiye.

Almost 1 million refugee children attend public schools in Türkiye, a country which is home to the largest number of refugees in the world. This reflects an increasing trend of refugee children being educated via national systems in host countries rather than parallel education systems using the language and curriculum of the country of origin. The implications for social cohesion between host and refugee communities are mixed. The inclusion of refugees in national education systems can pose challenges to the relational aspects of education, and relationships built in schools have the potential to support or undermine social cohesion.

A humanitarian 'cash for education' programme, reaching over half a million refugee children in Türkiye, beneficiary children's school attendance records were tracked and child protection teams then followed up with children who were found to be missing too many days of school in any given month. One recurring reason cited by the children was that they did not want to go to school because they experienced being othered and called names by children from the host community. There were also some reports of physical altercations between children from the two communities. At the same time, the rapid diversification of public schools had been difficult for the host community to contend with, reportedly because low language acquisition by refugee children was lowering the academic pace within mixed classrooms. All of this was occurring against a backdrop of deteriorating relations more generally between the host and refugee communities in the country. It was clear that school was not necessarily the safe space for children that we had imagined it to be. 

While tackling social cohesion was beyond the scope of objectives for the 'cash for education' programme, Dr Elif Karslı-Çalamak and I designed an action research project as part of my graduate studies on Early Childhood Education at the Middle East Technical University to address this issue. The project aimed to improve social cohesion between host and refugee communities through preschools. As the first place where children from the two communities tend to socialise with each other, public preschools in Türkiye can play a significant role in enhancing social integration and cohesion, especially considering the national Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum’s emphasis on family involvement. Guided reading by the teacher during 'circle time' in the class offers another opportunity. 

Drawing on the concepts of bibliotherapy and participatory co-creation, the 'action' component of the project began to take shape as a classroom intervention with parent engagement. The project used children's picture books to explore the themes of cross-group friendship among school children and the potential role of parents and of schools in enhancing social cohesion between host and refugee communities. Collaborating with a public preschool principal and teacher in Ankara, the intervention was implemented in a highly diverse classroom, with half the children from the host community (Turkish) and half the children from the refugee community (mostly Syrians but also an Iraqi and an Afghan).

Photo description: Excerpt from the books co-created in the project. Photo courtesy of Qimti Paienjton

Two bilingual picture books were used in the intervention. The first one was titled Khaled and Eren Become Friends and the second one was called Khaled and Eren Go to the Seaside. The main protagonists in the books, Khaled and Eren, are first grade students attending the same school. Both books were originally written in English, then translated into Turkish and Arabic and printed in a bilingual format with each page containing text in both languages. The reason for the bilingual format was to ensure that the books could be read to the children again at home by the parents in their home language. 

Khaled and Eren Become Friends was written by me and illustrated by a colleague. In this story, Eren, the Turkish protagonist, becomes upset at school one day and receives empathy from his classmate Khaled, the Syrian protagonist. They become friends and Khaled later offers to help Eren with his homework. We collectively read this first book in the classroom to gently introduce the topic of cross-group friendship. The teacher read aloud to the children in Turkish and an interpreter translated consecutively into Arabic for the benefit of the refugee children. A copy of the book was then sent home with each child, along with a letter soliciting the families’ ideas for the continuation of the story in the book. 

The parents sent us their ideas in their respective home languages, and we discussed these in the class with the children in a child-friendly game format. The children then made drawings about Khaled and Eren. A second book, Khaled and Eren Go to the Seaside, was thus co-created with the children and their families. In this story, Khaled visits Eren's house to work on their homework together, and then Eren's father takes them and their younger sisters to the seaside. Khaled is afraid to swim in the sea, but Eren empathises and encourages him. They end up having a great time at the beach and make fun plans for the upcoming holiday. The Turkish protagonists are excited about the opportunities to learn about a new culture, e.g. new language and food, and the Syrian protagonists cherish the welcoming attitude of their neighbours.

Given the opportunity to co-create a story, both refugee and host parents had positively extended the narrative of cross-group friendship. They had also used their participation in the process to voice concerns about their children's school life and share their aspirations for cross-group relations. Children spoke up about how they experience diversity in their classroom and provided some unexpected insights. All involved expressed appreciation for the intervention and felt empowered by their engagement in the process.

The books capture the friendship and shared experiences of refugee and host families. They showcase similarities as an entry point for friendship and how differences can be harnessed to help each other. They also showcase the joys and anxieties of young children and their resilience to cope with setbacks. Importantly, they put forward an asset-based depiction of refugee children and their families whilst also recognising the experiences of the host community contending with a context of forced displacement. 

The successful implementation of this intervention is encouraging for replication on a larger scale. The growing recognition of violence in schools more generally provides another impetus for scaling this type of intervention in other contexts as well. Preschools are perhaps the most effective place to start, from an early intervention perspective, but also because parent engagement in class activities and guided reading during 'circle time' are both already mandated aspects of the early childhood curriculum in many countries. This makes it an extremely low-cost intervention that teachers could easily implement within their existing classroom routines. Considering that new picture books are created in the process (with brilliant illustrations from the children themselves!), it is also possible to think about partnering up with publishers to enhance cost-effectiveness of the intervention.

 ¹ PRESTO was not involved with the implementation of or research on this intervention

About Author

Qimti Paienjton is an independent consultant with specializations in social policy and early childhood. She has a Master's in Public Policy and Administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Master's in Early Childhood Education from Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Over the last fifteen years, Qimti has worked with UNICEF across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, helping build and strengthen national systems to deliver cash transfers to families with children, integrating these with protection, education, and health services whenever possible. She has extensive experience in program design and operationalization and a special interest in participatory co-creation and qualitative research to elicit the voices of children and their families to inform the design and improvement of policies and programs. Qimti has worked closely with government and non-government stakeholders to solve complex problems and deliver results for children. She is committed to social impact, locally and globally.